Matt Zimmer: SDSU had what it took to beat Northwestern but couldn't deliver
· Yahoo Sports
Sep. 6—EVANSTON, Ill. — Stop me if you've heard this one.
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The South Dakota State football team gave a Big Ten team all they could handle for three-plus quarters, and then lost.
The Jackrabbits fell 34-18 to Northwestern on Saturday night at Martin Stadium, and while that score makes the game sound much more one-sided than it actually was, it doesn't really matter at this point. There was a time when SDSU, like most FCS teams, would take pride in putting a scare into any FBS team, let alone one from the Big Ten that played in a Bowl game a year ago.
But for SDSU, those days are gone. The Jacks have won two FCS national championships, put more than a dozen players into the NFL since jumping to Division I and become one of the most respected programs in the second-highest level of American college football. "Almost" beating an FBS team just doesn't mean much anymore.
If anything, it's just that much more frustrating. I don't want to speak for any Jackrabbit fans here, but I wonder if some of them wouldn't prefer if SDSU just got their butts kicked the next time they play a Big Ten team. Almost feels at this point like it would be less hair-pulling than watching them go toe-to-toe with teams whose best players make more money than their head coach only to come up just short time and time again.
In 2019 the Jacks lost 28-21 to a Minnesota Golden Gophers team that would ultimately go 11-2. In 2022 they lost 7-3 to an Iowa Hawkeyes team that won eight games. In both of those losses, the hurt outweighed whatever pride came from the effort.
That's how it felt Saturday night on a beautiful night next to Lake Michigan.
Yes, the final deficit was 16-points — more than the 12.5 point spread. With six minutes to go, it was 20-18 and the Jacks were lining up for a two-point conversion to tie the game. The crowd was uneasy. The Wildcats were on their heels. The Jacks had the momentum. There was a palpable sense that SDSU, after three quarters of getting in their own way but staying within striking distance, had found their groove and were about to take control.
It didn't happen. The Jacks tried a trick play on the conversion, and wide receiver Jack Smith's pass was knocked into the air and intercepted in the end zone.
The Wildcats answered with a quick scoring drive to go up 27-18, and after a painstaking SDSU drive got them into field goal range, Tristan Alvano missed for the first time in five tries. That was basically the ballgame, but the Jacks gave up an 80-yard touchdown run on the next play just to add to the sting.
It was a brutal ending, and the Wildcats scored half of their points in the fourth quarter, but really, SDSU spent the whole game shooting themselves in the foot.
Not with backbreaking mistakes like turnovers or allowing a special teams touchdown, no, but just with plain old fundamental mistakes. Penalties. Missed assignments. Dropped passes. Errant throws. More dropped passes. Stalled drives.
The Jacks chewed up 432 yards of offense against one of the Big Ten's better defenses and scored just one touchdown. Of Alvano's four converted field goals none were longer than 33 yards and three were less than 30. SDSU knocked on the door all day. Convert those field goals into touchdowns and they don't just win, they possibly dominate.
When asked if he felt like his team should've won, SDSU quarterback Chase Mason didn't hesitate.
"Absolutely," said the senior, who was erratic early but outstanding in the second half, ultimately throwing for 285 yards. "Going to the red zone a couple times and not executing, I mean, games like that come down to a couple plays. When you're playing teams like that there's lots of mistakes that you can't do offense and defense."
The defense gave up an unsightly 497 yards, and 151 of them came on Northwestern's first and last plays from scrimmage.
Somehow the Jackrabbits did not cover Griffin Wilde, the All-Big Ten receiver who used to play for them, on the opening play of the game, and he ran into the middle of the field all alone for a 71-yard gain that would've been an 82-yard touchdown with a better throw. One play later it was 7-0.
Coach Dan Jackson confirmed it was a blown assignment, and while his defense settled in impressively after that, ultimately forcing five Northwestern punts and allowing Alvano's leg to keep them in striking distance, the big plays were too costly to overcome.
"It just comes down to being locked into your keys and your assignment, which we did I'd say 90 percent of the time," said linebacker Chase Van Tol, who had nine tackles to lead SDSU. "They had probably four or five explosive plays and that's what beat us. We can't have that happen with a team like this."
Jackson agreed, and took responsibility.
"We didn't do our job on their big plays," the coach said. "And it wasn't a physical thing at all, it was mental errors. And we need to eliminate those which means we need to coach better. That's not on the players. We need to coach better to ensure those things don't happen."
In the big picture it's not an especially troubling loss. Defeats to Big Ten teams are generally not held against FCS teams when their playoff resumes are being evaluated, and SDSU's goal this year is to win a national championship, not to make some statement about their FBS-readiness.
And for large swaths of Saturday night's game they were the better team on a Big Ten opponent's home field (er, temporary home field). They never looked physically overmatched.
That's the frustrating part, though. When an FCS team plays a power conference school they're supposed to be overmatched. That's what all that Big Ten NIL money is for, to buy better talent. The Jacks appeared to have close to equal talent, and they just made too many mistakes to capitalize.
"I would say (it's) a disappointing loss and a missed opportunity," Jackson said. "We talked about being the most disciplined, physical, connected team in the country. And for large stretches we showed we were the most physical team. And the most connected, because I think we stuck together through some challenging times. But we weren't the most disciplined. There's so many things that all of us need to work on, myself and the staff, and opportunities to grow from this.
"I think it says a lot about our program that we're talking about this game the way we are," Jackson added. "That's no slight to Northwestern. It says everything about what I think about this team and the expectations and the standards that we have, and we just didn't meet those standards of South Dakota State football tonight to win a big football game."